The internal combustion engine art has evolved continuously toward the goal of producing more efficient combustion, quieter engines, lower exhaust temperatures, improved ease of starting, and the ability to handle a wide range of fuel characteristics.
These optimum goals notwithstanding, and in spite of an almost endless variety of structural arrangements designed hopefully to attain these improvements, the ultimate goals, by and large, have remained elusive.
In recognition of the need for a fresh approach directed to the attainment of these goals, it is an object of the invention to provide improved apparatus and methods for burning fuel in internal combustion engines, which apparatus and methods promote more even combustion so as to improve the efficiency of, and control over, fuel burning, improve ease of engine starting, and facilitate the ability of engines to accommodate diverse fuels.
A principal object of the invention is to provide a uniquely intensified system for disrupting, heating, and burning fuel and which system is characterized by the generation fo burning loci in an engine.
In the context of this basic object, it is contemplated that heated gas streams and fuel streams will pass into such burning loci so as to promote the heating, particulation, and combustion of the liquid fuel in the fuel streams.
It is likewise an object of the invention to implement the foregoing objects with fuel being injected, at least in major part, after a piston has reached top dead center, i.e. after the point in time when the piston has commenced its working stroke.
An object of an independent aspect of the invention is to cause the mass flow rate of fuel flowing into burning loci to bear a desired, generally continuing, relationship to the mass flow rate of combustion supporting gas passing into such burning loci. It is believed that optimum combustion results in an engine may be achieved where the mass flow rate of fuel, injected into a combustion chamber in the form of streams, is continuously increased during the working stroke of the piston and is maintained in, or tends to approach, a generally continuous ratio relationship to the mass flow rate of combustion supporting gas passing into the burning loci.
Yet another object of the invention is to implement the foregoing objects in the context of engines where the burning loci are controlled and located by path, passage, or slot defining wall means carried either by a piston or cylinder or cooperatively formed by interaction between a piston and cylinder.
It is a related object of the invention to provide such methods and apparatus which, in producing more even burning, minimize or eliminate detonation tendencies so as to maintain lower peak pressures within the combustion zone thereby reducing the possibility of mechanical damage lowering the level of engine noise, and lessening the need for heavy engine frame structures.
It is a particular object of the invention to provide a uniquely effective system for utilizing air, which has been compressed and heated by a piston, to disperse and heat fuel being injected into a combustion chamber during the downstroke of the piston.
A further object of the invention is to provide an improved system for dispersing and burning fuel in the cylinder of an internal combustion engine so as to substantially reduce carbonization and thereby lower the operating temperature of the engine and the engine exhaust.
In accomplishing certain of the foregoing objects, a method of burning fuel in an engine is presented which is characterized by the generation of generally mutually distinct, burning loci within the engine. Heat airstreams and fuel streams pass into these burning loci. The burning loci, at least in major part, are generated and maintained during the working stroke of an engine piston. Thus, the fuel streams are injected into the engine interior for combustion purposes in large part during the working stroke of the engine, i.e. for example, after a linearly reciprocating piston has reached "top dead center" and commenced its downstroke. During most of the fuel injection phase, the heated airstreams passing into the burning loci are heated, at least in part as a result of prior fuel combustion.
In another independent aspect of the invention, and/or in the context of the foregoing concept, the mass flow rate of fuel injected into the particular burning loci is relatively gradually increased in general proportion to the increasing rate of mass flow of combustion supporting gas into the burning loci, at least during the bulk of the period of time that the burning loci persists.
It will be recognized that the burning loci will be generated by wall means carried by a cylinder or by a piston or by cooperating wall means carried in part by a cylinder and in part by a piston.
Other independently significant facets of the invention entail apparatus means operable to accomplish the above-described combustion techniques.